Here are the safest and most dangerous cars on the road...

It's an interesting article.

I wonder what it means, though. The article itself seems to suggest that the cars with the higher rates of death per million registrations are inherently more dangerous places to be than those with the lowest. But the study is a straight study of deaths per million registrations, and doesn't cover other variables. The two "most dangerous" cars were the Kia Rio and the Hyundai Accent. But they're very common first cars for teenagers here, and I assume they would be in America too. So they're often being driven by inexperienced young people. Also, those cars - certainly here, and again I'd assume in America - are very common rental cars. So they're often being driven by people who are unfamiliar with the cars and unfamiliar with the roads. The other big market for the Rio and Accent is very old people, who have slow reactions (I grew up in a retirement town, and the driving was appalling). All of these factors must skew the results significantly.

 

Note also that the study examines only drivers. Passengers and non-occupants are excluded.

I don't know how big a deal this exclusion is with respect to passengers, but it is very significant with respect to non-occupants -- pedestrians, cyclists, and occupants of other vehicles getting tangled in multi-vehicle crashes.

 

Yes. A lot of the best-rated cars are the type of big SUV that regularly reverse over kids in driveways, for example.

 

I remember 'studies' from previous years in which a Chevy/Ford was rated deadlier than a Buick/Mercury. The cars were badge engineered models though. So any difference between them was most likely due to the drivers.

 

"...Cars are still susceptible to physics: Bigger cars proved safer than smaller ones."

People with an automotive Napoleonic complex are always bending numbers this way and that way to make smaller cars "statistically safer" than larger ones.

I'd still rather take a crash in one of the company trucks than my company's Prius.

 

Those SUV front ends also earned that nickname, 'Battering Rams of Death'.

 

this is a good example of poor reporting in US. who is going to be a safer driver, a 50 year old man in Mercedes-Benz GL-Class 4WD or a teenager in a Kia Rio?

furthermore, there are fewer accidents because people drive less.

and BTW, "garantirovanny grob" means guaranteed tomb.

 

I should leave my family out of this. 25 years ago, my Dad was the 50-year-old in the expensive car and I was the teenager in the cheap car. And I was the one who didn't total his car. And I was the one who my Mum and sister would ask to drive. This isn't because I'm a particularly good driver; it's because Dad is remarkably bad, in large part because he's overconfident.

But I think if we leave my family out of this, you're right, and that was my point too.

 

There are no dangerous cars, just dangerous drivers... alright, maybe there are some dangerous cars.

 

Here's the IIHS release:
Death rates fall as vehicles improve


They break the deaths down to whether they were single car ormultiple, and if a rollover was involved.

 

I once hired a Rover 214 that had no brakes.

 

One in particular does come to mind.



At least this guy has a sense of humor about it...

 

By today's standards, almost everything pre-1997 is dangerous.

 

True.

I drove without a seatbelt for several years after I became licensed, in fact I might have even taken my test while not wearing a seatbelt - I can't remember.

 

Very true.

But while the best drivers can stay out of most trouble, they cannot avoid everything. Some fertilizer still happens, either faster than humans can react or from directions that are not practically foreseeable. Especially on roads crowded with drivers of much lower awareness.

When that fertilizer happens, today's cars are far more protective of the occupants than cars of two decades ago, which in turn were far better than the cars two decades before that.

Unfortunately, typical humans are also subject to some risk homeostasis. Because of this, numerous safety improvements produce less benefit than initial theory suggests that they should. And the increased sloppiness of some increases risk to everyone sharing the road with them.

 

update:
we learned from the news recently that Mercedes SUV 4WD is not the safest car after all. it "killed" a driver and 7 other people. makes you wonder if the driver had enough insurance for that.

 

Id rather take a crash in a Prius than in a Smart car.
I argued here for weeks in the past about why they are less safe.
Smart car advertised the frame does not deform in a high speed collision.
I argued it was due to light weight in the test,but occupants would suffer from lack of any crush zone absorbing impact energy.
Curious what the death rate for Smart cars is.
Funny the guy who was the biggest supporter of the safety of the Smart car ,drove a Highlander.